Back in 2008, Colin Northway designed a flash game that was wildly addictive called Fantastic Contraption. With the simple goal of delivering a red orb from one side of the map to the other, players used different moving or static parts to construct their delivery device. It was the simplicity that inspired seemingly infinite solutions to each challenge—real feats of engineering and armchair ingenuity, like elaborate cranes and slingshots.

The Vive combines laser-based motion tracking with a handheld controller to transform VR from a viewing experience into a spatial one. This means that for Fantastic Contraption, the two-dimensional limits of flash are blown away.

Now players must build in three dimensions, engineering structures that can support themselves, while delivering the red ball up, down, or all around in this world of floating platforms. The transformation is akin to going from drawing an assembly line on a piece of paper to actually constructing a three-dimensional car.

But beyond introducing new gameplay possibilities through VR, Fantastic Contraption is transformative to gaming itself. As Mark Wilson writes for Fast Company, party platforms like the Wii failed to retain their realism and attraction because players learned that a simple flick of the wrist from the couch was just as likely to bowl a strike as actually simulating bowling in one’s living room. The effect was the elimination of the stupid-fun factor: the only real motivation to play a party game in a group was the shared silliness of actually pretending to bowl.

Fantastic Contraption and the Vive overcome this failure, because the creation of three-dimensional space keeps the player honest. They haveto move around to play.

And this is great for communal gaming, because the Vive’s ability to be linked up to the TV enables friends to shout suggestions, cheer the player on, or laugh as they inadvertently chuck their contraption off into space. As Wilson calls it, Fantastic Contraption is like “a modern-day rendition of pin the tail on the donkey.”

This all culminates in something new for VR—the chance to transcend the headset as an anti-social experience, and the only provider of that experience. Despite the Vive’s incredible capabilities, its pairing with Fantastic Contraption relegates the headset and wand to a simple aid, creating the world in which friends can interact on different levels without providing sole access to that world. Everybody has a role to play in the game. The rush of completing a challenge becomes shared. With games like Fantastic Contraption, VR gaming isn’t so much about bringing the fun to the player as it is about the players bringing the fun to the game.

In 2009 the New Museum in New York presented “It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq,” a commission by British Artist Jeremy Deller. I left the museum with quiet tears streaming down my face, deeply moved by the experience. Deller placed a living room setup in the middle of the floor and curated a group of veterans, journalists, scholars, and Iraqi nationals to have an unrestrained open dialogue with the visitors. I sat alone with Nour al-Khal, who worked as a translator in Basra and survived journalist Steven Vincent in 2005 when they were abducted, beaten, and shot by armed men.

No one knows for sure what will be the next great development in storytelling technology, but many are placing their bets on virtual reality. Since the Oculus Rift launched on Kickstarter in 2012, dozens of VR-related startups have emerged, creating everything from VR treadmills to documentaries.

Want to go to the Soho Apple Store? The Ralph Lauren and Dior stores? Sure you do. Like many streets in Manhattan, Greene Street has a long history—one that has changed with each quarter century. And Greene Street was not always the shopping mecca that it is today. As the interactive web documentary A Long History of a Short Block demonstrates, the street, like Manhattan itself, has played host to a wide range of infrastructure, communities, businesses, and people.

What if I told you that the “future” of storytelling the way people often think about it—Twitter and blogging and Internet-centricity—isn’t really the future at all? What if all of these “new” developments in storytelling are actually references to 100 years ago?

In November 2014, a scandal erupted around Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto after the media discovered that his enormous family mansion was actually owned by a construction company to which the government had recently awarded a multibillion-dollar contract. The mansion’s ownership raised suspicions of a quid pro quo agreement between Nieto and the construction company. In a country fraught with crime and violence, Nieto’s house—often referred to as the Casa Blanca—for many became a symbol of government corruption.

Back in 2008, Colin Northway designed a flash game that was wildly addictive called Fantastic Contraption. With the simple goal of delivering a red orb from one side of the map to the other, players used different moving or static parts to construct their delivery device. It was the simplicity that inspired seemingly infinite solutions to each challenge—real feats of engineering and armchair ingenuity, like elaborate cranes and slingshots.

In the Eyes of the Animal, created by Marshmallow Laser Feast, is a new virtual-reality experience that lets viewers see and explore nature as animals do. Created using a combination of 360-degree aerial filming, photogrammetry, and CT scans—along with a binaural soundtrack using audio recordings sourced from the surrounding woodland—the video offers a unique perspective of England’s Grizedale Forest and its local animal and insect inhabitants.

Eli Horowitz is a writer, designer, editor, and previous publisher of McSweeney’s. His digital novel, The Silent History, won the Webby Awards in 2012, and his most recent project, The Pickle Index, was showcased at this this year’s FoST summit in the Story Arcade. The novel, set in a society where all citizens must participate in a pickle-centric recipe exchange, exists in three simultaneous stand-alone editions: an app, an interactive hardcover set, and a paperback published by FSG.